Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Whizzing off the Stand

The Deer & Deer Hunting Forum died before I could get any serious answers, so I'll throw this out here. I have an experiment in mind; I need your help.

The experiment involves taking a bottle of water out to the stand and pouring it in a way that simulates someone whizzing off the stand. I'd like some folks to try it and get back to me on the results. We can discuss the particulars. I'm just looking for some willing volunteers.

See, here's the thing. This all starts about 2006. My #3 son was still pretty small, and I was just getting him to where he could sit with me in a buddy stand. Lil Angus gets to about 0900 and he's got to whizz. I'm thinking about the hassle of getting him unhooked and down the ladder and then back up, and I finally tell him that it's okay to whizz off the stand. What the heck! He achieves this feat and sits back down and within short order, we're swimming in deer. This was early muzzleloader season. I wasn't going to bust a cap on anything that did not have serious rackage. What we got were all doe and a small buck. All told, in the next hour, we must have seen ten deer.

That got me to thinking. Whenever I'd been inclined to attend to matters out in the woods, I've frequently had close encounters with deer. #1? #2? Yes. Both. For a while there, anytime I let fly in the woods, I seemed to have an audience. This goes back nearly 40 years. Over the decades, the number of incidents have mounted up. I have opined that deer are like inquisitive 3 yr olds. They are curious about how we do it. I've popped a squat in the woods and stood up to see a big buck eyeing me. I've shot deer after situations like this. Why not after a whizz off a stand?

The episode in 2006 got me to thinking. Also about this time, middle age started to set in, and well. . . let's say the issue became more pressing as time wore on. I'm now 62, and a sit in one of my ladder stands now has to include one or more experiments. What I can tell you is that a preponderance of the sessions result in a deer sighting within a few minutes. I hunt stands mostly in oak/hickory groves so I suppose it could be that they hear it hitting the leaves and think its acorns.

Years ago I experimented with pitching acorns out of a stand. That never seemed to work.

So now I'm wondering: is it the sound or something else that attracts them? That's why I need y'all's help.

Take a bottle. Fill it with clean water. Dribble about 16 oz off the side of the stand, kind of like you're whizzing, and let me know what happens.

Shaman---- ??????? ya really got me mixed up here... ya talk about being swarmed with deer after a whizz--- shooting deer after taking a dump ---- then posting about making yourself sorta scent free in a Baking Soda topic.. Listen to Blackheart in your Baking Soda one. ---- As Bob Dylan said---- " The answer my friend is blowin in the wind "

Although i don't make it a habit i don't hesitate to pee out of the stand should the need arise. The movement that you make while trying to pee or some other odor that's on you will scare the deer faster than the urine smell will. Urine is urine and i personally don't think it's the sound it makes hitting the ground but the smell that strikes their curiosity, especially bucks. Now i wouldn't never ever take a dump anywhere near my hunting sight as that's a whole different smell lol.

Here's a test that i've tried many times, find a scrape during pre rut or better yet make a false scrape and pee in it and i'll promise you when you come back in a day or so that it has been visited. I use to hold it and make sure i never peed anywhere near my hunting area until an old local guy told me otherwise. He's actually the one that told me to pee in a scrape when i came across one or make a false one and see what happened so i did. I thought he was crazy but he wasn't and he has harvested a ton of deer and some really nice bucks to boot.

Having said that, now i don't go around peeing everywhere that i hunt but if by chance i have to pee while i'm hunting i don't hesitate to do so and i don't worry about it scaring the deer away because in my experience it won't. Like i said, urine is urine and every animal pees in the woods including me .

I stand by what I say about baking soda. It really does help. Remember, this is cutting down mostly on pit-stink and things like laundry detergent scents and other unnatural aromas. There may be a difference between that and the more natural scents. I know there are some guys that pee in buck scrapes and claim deer can't tell the difference.

Whizzing? Look I can't figure out why I see so many deer when heeding the Call of Nature, but I also can't discount it. Back at D&DH we'd have discussions like this that would sometime stretch years. There were guys who brought P-bottles to the stand, and some guys who whizzed right over the rail. Some fellows like me, have had an extraordinary number of deer encounters with our flies unzipped or our pants around our ankle. I've seen a doe roll in fresh urine. I've copped a squat and come up with 5 deer watching me with rapt attention. They ran off, but they came back 10 minutes later when I was back in my ground blind and I managed to shoot the buck trailing the rest of them.

I'm just wondering if the sound of liquid falling is somehow attractive or something else.

never had deer do that but an elk almost tried to get in the blind with me after wizzing in the woods about 10 yards from it. thought it was weird but might be a dominate guy thing . who knows.

. . . and I had that happen with a fairly large buck in 2017. He came right up to the window of the blind after I'd sat back down from paying the rent on the coffee.

shaman-

I'll not discount your findings but I'd also urge you to consider happenstance - particularly when you've noted on numerous occasions having ample deer on the lone property you hunt. Have enough deer, and, given enough time in the woods, you're likely to detect multiplicity in even some of the most peculiar situations.

That said, I have whizzed from my treestand and had a buck come looking - peak rut, calm conditions and crisp leaves on the ground.
There is zero doubt he heard the commotion and was looking for the maker of the leakage in hopes of it being a doe worthy of chase.
The s'mediumish buck ended up right beneath me, looking around for a couple minutes before walking off.

Just piss in a milk jug and put the lid on quick. It works. If you're really anal about it bring along a bottle of descenting spray. It's not Missile surgery. Deer have an uncanny strong sense of smell. But if you piss in a jug and put the top on it keeps that piss smell out of the wind.

I might be missing a heck of a hunting opportunity by keeping it in a porta-pee bottle, but my man cave isn't exactly devoid of nice antlers. The way I see it, I hunt in a big woods and look for big sign from a buck that doesn't see or smell people for most of the year. He is making that sign there because he lives there and any foreign odor is going to put him on high alert. Some deer are curious, but those are generally the first ones that end up on the meat pole and they are not typically the smarter, older ones.

Truth.

i agree x2,except ladies pee seems to attract bucks

I've been pissing off my stand or out of my blind for 30 years. Can you believe it...right on to the ground!!! :wow:

If a deer ran every time it smelled piss, they'd never stop running.

I never piss around my hunting places.

That could get awfully uncomfortable or require a fair amount of disturbing commotion getting in and out of location. If I have to go, I dig a cat hole and be done with it. I've seen and shot deer after doing so.

In our part of the world, there's always a handy piece of fieldstone around. It's just like lifting the toilet seat. Done? Just put the seat back down.

During turkey season, I pretty much cycle through the same rocks from last year.

I've got the added advantage of having built an outhouse between two of my favorite stands. It's next door to the family campground. That's convenience!

How do some of you function in the woods. LMAO.

Go hunt! Be outside.

They have outhouses in their stands.
When I was a young man I never took a piss from my stand and was proud of it.
Now that I'm in my 60's I quite regularly take a piss from my stand and don't give a damn.
I have noticed after 50 years of deer hunting that it makes no difference in seeing deer.

They sell a lot of these around here during deer season. 16oz goes into the woods, and 16oz comes back out.....

If you have to pee, just let it fly from the stand! It doesn't bother deer.

I'm not carrying around some nasty container of pee back and forth from the stand!

Some WAY OVER THINK this issue. YMMV